Where do you put your trust - Ralph Douglas West 11.15.2020

this is the day the lord is made we rejoice and we are glad in it thank you nicole for always blessing us and blessing me on this day to remind me that beautiful on the feet of those who have been commissioned to carry the gospel of the lord jesus christ and to those of you in leadership and our staff we celebrate 33 years as salt on the earth and light on the world and a city on a hill that cannot be hidden and so like paul to the prayers in his prayers to the church of philippi and thessalonika my prayer too is to thank god publicly and in your presence for your faithfulness and for your love and for your enduring hope it's a good time to be part of the church of the lord jesus christ to remind the world that when everything else is shaken there are some things on earth that actually remain as we come to celebrate this day this year we find ourselves at a great crossroad in human history i want to invite you to open the word of god with me one more time to proverbs but this time in chapter 3 to one of the favorite passages in the word of god to many people as a reminder of where we are to put our trust hear what god's word says to god's people as he reminds us that he is our guide in light trust in the lord beginning at verse 5 chapter 3 of proverbs with all of your heart and lean not to your own understanding and in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths don't be wise in your own eyes feel the lord and and depart from evil it will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones honor the lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of all of your increase so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine this is the word of god you may be seated and those of you at home you may relax whether you put your trust over the last several weeks some of us have been studying through the writings of the wisdom literature of proverbs and we've drawn a conclusion on our own just by reading the word of god that knowledge can get you going but only wisdom can show you where this has taken place in the life of many people like several years ago on a holiday weekend not different from the holiday weekend that's approaching us jeremy griffith and his wife put their 11 month year old daughter in the car programmed his new gps to tell him how to get from his home in will meadow valley across the canyon range to his mother-in-law's house of which he had been there on more than one occasion the new gps programmed him and gave him the shouted shortest route that could shave 40 minutes off of the destination in the car he and his wife and 11 month old daughter made their way east to the mountain ranges on the new route that had been designated by the brand new gps only to discover about an hour and a half into the drive that they had come to a dead-end street off the main road for this new shortcut in addition to that their four-wheel drive it got stuck in the snow beyond that he decided that jeremaine thought that that jeremy thought that he would make a journey on some expedition hikes to get back only to discover that he was lost spending the night he and his wife and 11 month year now out of formula decided to give a farewell video for their family because they knew that they had entered into a place in which there was no way out knowledge got them there but they needed something beyond that to get them out and like other holiday travelers that you read about whose gps is get them off the main road to many side roads well thankfully the police or the traffic patrollers of oregon made their way and this enforcement came in to rescue them and they were able to find safety and security i've been reading about a lot of people who've been depending upon these gps's especially since for some strange reason that's the way i seem to be traveling around myself of how people over the last little literally the last few years have been taking journeys throughout california's death valley and many of them have died there because their gps have re-rooted them and put them in a place where there's no way out that's a lot of knowledge to have but only wisdom can get you out this morning that's what we need not more knowledge we need wisdom to get us out knowledge can get us in and it's good and i'm not down playing knowledge to be skillful you actually need knowledge in fact knowledge can build a house but wisdom can build a home knowledge can produce pills for you to sleep but only wisdom can give you rest knowledge can give you a job but only wisdom can give you a career knowledge can give you insight about religion but wisdom can give you a relationship with the living lord this seems to be what the writer is reminding us of here is for us to settle one question and that is where do you put your trust is it in someone or in some thing we're at the end of a decade and in the beginning of a new decade to take place hard to believe that we are two decades into a new millennium but beyond the newness of time there's the newness now of politics and so there are people that has been evidenced have put their trust some in one party and some in another party some in one person and others in another person and i would hope those of us who are confident in jesus christ know by now that there's not a whole lot of hope in putting your hope in anything that changes every four years that our confidence i'm speaking to my congregation now we want to put it in something that's grander we don't even want to put our confidence in a god that some have been promoting one of my friends here who pastors one of the largest southern baptist churches in the country said this congregation several weeks ago that if you're a democrat then you can't be a christian another person that i know and have shared the stage of preaching with in california made the same statement he said it's impossible to be a christian and a democrat i heard another pastor just recently get on his knees before his congregation and plead to god to forgive america for not voting for his candidate and then he summed it up this way of saying for the one that we have now elected he has a faulty relationship with god because of his catholicity i want to say to all of you and particularly to these preachers that god has not divinely deputized any one of you or even me to make the decision or who can and cannot enter into a right relationship with jesus christ i didn't know that god belonged to a particular party and yet this is what we hear and what it boils down to to simple-minded thinking people is that they believe that if they put their hope and trust in one something then they are better than someone else's something proverbs is a wisdom book i've said it the way that i've said it so that you can make the decision on your own the question now is where will you put your trust in someone or something here this piece of wisdom literature emphatically states trust in the lord not the lord of a small lord but the lord adonai put your trust in god that is where do you put the treasure of your trust do you put your trust in some expert do you put your trust in some institution or instrument if you put your trust in anything like that i can tell you it will fail because heaven and earth will pass away only god's word and god himself shall stand forever trust to trust the lord how with all of our heart trust in god you know trust is one of those big picture words of resting your confidence on something you've heard it multiple times when people talk about faith they say when you sat down you didn't check the seat you just rested your weight on it and actually that is the picture of what trust is you rest your weight on the confidence that that which is beneath you can sustain you but as good an image as that is don't you put all your trust in a chair don't you put your confidence in a bridge this happened in fact july 17 1981 at the hyatt regency hotel in kansas city missouri they were having a tea party not political but literally a tea party where people were gathering pre-wedding celebration two thousand people had gathered and they had placed themselves in the upper rungs of the hotel those of you who have been in that hotel it's renamed now know how it's situated that you walk out of your door you look over the balcony onto the lobby floor floors four and floor two jut out and they are placed over each other floor three sets off to the side and so you're able to see the floor and then from the second floor then the third floor and then the fourth floor there was something faulty in the construction of the way that that platform had been designed in which floors 2 and 4 already were incapable of capable of sustaining a certain amount of weight and now with 2 000 people around the wrong the different bridges gave way there were 200 injuries and over 100 deaths all because of a faulty foundation people celebrated and thought that they were standing on something that was stable and secure only to discover that there was something wrong in the very foundation of it anything other than god has the capability of giving way and losing its suspending power put your trust in the lord today the eternal god who moses says is from everlasting the everlasting william augustus jones used to say that and he said he's from everlasting they're everlasting and pastor bill jones will say god's always going where he's coming from everlasting the everlasting the god is eternal the god is secure that god is stable put your trust in god i speak to my congregation now and for those of you that listen i know that you want to put trust possibly in bank accounts and security deposits but all of that can be wiped away by one doctor's visit put your confidence in him who will not leave you put your trust in the living lord at the turn of the millennium we have been over to uh london rehnai and we were interested in walking across the new millennial bridge it's beautiful it looks platinum it crosses the thames but it had a problem some of you probably recall initially that the first group to walk over when they stood on it the bridge began to wobble and it wobbled so much that the people on the bridge began to wobble and they had to desist in allowing people for crossing over the bridge so they wouldn't wobble over into the thames or into the railways or the broad rails and injure themselves because if the bridge wobbles the pedestrian wobbles when you walk on any foundation that is wobbly you wobble along with it i'm not certain a lot a lot of things but i want to be certain about the god that i worship trust in the lord and how do i do that with all of my heart i want to trust god with all of my devotion and all of my loyalty i want to put my confidence in him i don't need more information i do need wisdom and i need wisdom for the living of these days i need wisdom to guide my congregation through a maze and through a mist and through a mystery i need god to give me that kind of wisdom that the people that follow me can rest at home and say i may not agree with everything that pastor west says but i do trust the wisdom that god has given to him that we can get to where we're supposed to go together i'm not depending upon a gps i use them to travel through the city but i don't want to use it to travel through life i don't want to use any apparatus like that i want to put my confidence in god the one that i can always depend on who can always remind me if i put my trust in him if i trust and never doubt he is surely to bring me out take your burdens your doubts your disbeliefs to the lord and leave them there that's one thing that we learn through looking at this kind of new look at gps is to put your trust in the lord look at that verse now at the very next line in in verse number five trust in the lord with all your heart and then it simply says and lean not to your own understanding it's an image of a person that's possibly leaning on a staff is the assumption of someone leaning on their intellect or someone leaning on something that's apart from god and whenever you lean on anything other than god chances are you might end in the wrong direction one of the pieces of poetry that many of us had to memorize was william hensley's invictus out of the night that covers me black is the pit from pole to pole i think whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul hensley had lost his legs to tuberculosis and this was really in some kind of way his self-defining taught life and the god under the blood yawning of chance my head may be bloody but unbound matters not out straight the gate how charged with punishment to stroll i'm the master of my faith the captain of my soul i love that piece of poetry even though it makes me an atheist for just a moment i really love that piece of poetry i don't want to live by it theologically but i can live by it humanly i'm not the master of my fate i know that i'm not the captain of my soul but there is a kind of determination in me that wants to keep on going on and you can love that and interpret that piece of literature and poetry when you understand how not to lean on your own understanding trust in the lord with all your heart lean not to your own understanding vladimir kramek the grand master chess player was getting demolished by young magnus carson would have got him but young magnus couldn't stay awake during the meet i guess in some ways that though he had the chest board to his favor and couldn't stay awake even the bass can lose if you go to sleep at the wheel in some way vladimir on that occasion was able to come out of it trust in the lord with all your heart but lean not to your own understanding paul knew something about this about having the chest pieces set in the right place to win to make the best or the best move or the best next move you remember out of his own understanding he wanted to go one place and he really wanted to be there and this is acts chapter 16. he had programmed his gps in life to go one direction and god reprogrammed it right in the middle of his journey let me tell you something you can plan your life for one way and god can change directions let me say it again you can map your life out to go where you want it to go and god can re-route your root without your permission and yet when paul ended where god put him great things started to happen he ended up in philippi and the first convert to the west was one and a woman became one of the grand witnesses to the good news of jesus christ let me tell you something god has a way of directing our paths james tells us if we lack this what we need wisdom we can ask god who gives it liberally he'll give it abundantly and when we do that god not only changes the direction of a paul he can change the direction even of a joseph who has been given the orders to care for god's greatest gift jesus christ in something as flimsy as a dream he dreamt and god led god is able to direct your paths so trust in the lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding and that's hard isn't it because some of us we know everything and anytime you meet that person you can't tell omniscience anything that's the danger of knowing everything nobody can tell you anything i never want to be that person and i pray that as you listen you'll never be that person i always want to know and be informed and learn that's what it means to be a disciple so trust in the lord lean not to your own understanding i'm done now acknowledge him and he'll give you a promise he will direct your path rickenbacker was a pilot in world war ii had very much to do in the founding of what many of us remembered as eastern airlines i was on one of the last eastern airline flights but rickerbacker was a pilot in the world war ii he said his then apparatus the navigation system we'll say his gps and when he programmed it to fly from the west coast to his destination according to the coordinates everything was exact except his navigation instrument was off by one degree that's not a bad thing to be off one degree the only problem is one degree the further you go the further off target are you from where you're trying to go and rickerbacker was so far off about one degree that he had to ditch the plane had to get out of it because he was going further in the wrong direction in life all of us know something about getting on the wrong road the wrong freeway the wrong back street looking for a shortcut through life and having to get back on the road to be rerouted to get back to where you're supposed to be here direct that mean that god shows you every little detail in your life that's not what it means because if god does that then we can blame god for all of the bad choices in life that we make he gives you a mind to think with an ability to reason to think through the consult with him and to believe and trust that god can guide your life and how many times maybe none of this has ever happened to you maybe this is one of those sermons where you say i can't relate to anything you said because my life has always been aligned in a particular perfection that has not been my case and so allow me to own the sermon and the content all for myself because there have been times where i have misstepped in life thinking that i should turn right when i should have gone left times where i have should have stopped when i've gone backwards other times where i should have paused but i went forward there's turn around right before you enter the street into our community for 20 years i'm that's the most fearful entry of my day exiting an entrance because i just know one day some unaware driver and i've seen it over 20 years just plows right through the yield sign so on my way into that roundabout i deliberately almost stopped regardless of who's in the right of way because i know somebody's not paying attention and they're gonna just plow right through that's why i need god to direct my path i need god to direct it on every occasion when you look at the history of missions in the world you see where god has directed paths you look at a day like today where churches celebrate in their history you sit down and have to remember god directs our paths god is the one that does it as much as you and much as i want to take credit for it we can't we have to really truly honestly say it is god who directs our path and then we have to remember the one who says that i direct your path jesus says i am the way and then he turns around and says not just the way i am the truth and i'm just that i am the life you want to have real life follow me i'm the way i'm the truth i'm the light and i'm the one that will direct your paths i want to return back to our time over the last weeks have been very interesting i used to laugh when frederick douglass haynes iii my classmate he will always get up and say to these disunited states fred's words are prophetic today we watched right down the middle that's frightening to believe that some people can ascribe to of political bigotry promote racist behavior underscore abuse of a particular group of people in 2020 that's frightening to me you look in the face of your innocent children and you think in 2020 that there would be some hurdles they don't have to jump and you sit down once again and say life hasn't gone as forward as we thought it had and we've seen it i won't spend my time trying to answer it i'm not i'm just mentioning it who will direct our paths how do we get to where we're supposed to go i close now one of the images that we use in the scripture for direction is light and often we'll sing that beautiful hymn walk in the light beautiful light come where the dew drops mercy shine bright shine all around us by day and by night jesus the light of the world clarence mccartney the preacher and i closed now when he was a boy said that he remember growing up on the farm in his fear of the darkness and there were times where his dad would tell him clarence go close the gates make sure the barn doors are fastened don't let the animals out and he said that it was the most fearful thing because he would have to go in the dark all by himself he would have to find his way through the night to fasten gates and close doors and move property into its right place and he said for some reason my dad always asked me to do that when the sun had set and the shadow of night had come he said in almost every time when my daddy saw me trembling he never said a word he would just get a lantern enlighted and stand where i'm supposed to be and once i walk to the edge of that corner he would move in front of me and then i would turn and walk to the edge of the light of the next corner and then he would go further out and i would walk to the edge of the gate where there was just enough light to fasten it and then when i would fasten it he would turn again and he would walk further in front of me and where i would walk to the edge of the light where there was just enough light for me to close the doors and then he would turn and make his way home and i would follow the edge of the light behind him you see in life when you say trust in the lord god probably won't shine all the light at one time on where you're supposed to go that's what we always say lord show me the way and what we're saying is show me all of the way and god says no but what i will be i'll be the light to the edge of where you need to take your next step and once you take that step i'll move in front of you and then i'll move in front of you you just make sure you follow the light i'm the light and you follow me my word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your pathway you follow the light and i'll take you to where you need to be this morning some of you are in the dark of life in your spiritual journey at home you're listening around the world you're listening and you're saying i'm in darkness because i have put my confidence and my trust in some system institution some party and i've discovered that one day all of it's going to go away none of it is has certainty and eternality attached to it i need to put my hope in that which will last forever and so this morning let me hold the light out for you let me hold the light out just far enough for you to stand up to the edge of your seat and let me walk in front of you just far enough to the altar for you to follow that light forward i know you're not here physically but you know what i mean to come forward and make a decision for jesus christ and let him be the light that will carry you through life trust in the lord trust in him rest all your confidence on him with the surety and the certainty unlike a wobbly bridge he is stable and will not collapse trust in the lord with all your lean not to your own intellect i know you're bright and i celebrate that but don't lean to your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him all of them in your work your career in your family in your recreation acknowledge him and he will now don't ask me how he'll do it but i know he'll do it he will direct your path there's some of you now you're saying i feel like i'm in the maze of life and i don't know where the exit sign is keep following it he'll direct your path and when he does you too will be able to see like the one who declares i know how i got out of this jesus is my way jesus is my truth and jesus is my life shall we pray our father how we thank you for being the light of life and as a congregation i can't speak for anybody else beyond the domain of my congregation the people that you have trusted me to shepherd help me to say to them on this day and for them to hear it let's put our trust in the one whom we can depend on and then for the many that listen and say but you're my pastor virtually i say to them too may we put our confidence as strange as it sounds in god in him alone for when we put our confidence in you we see people right and one another are right and then for those who are saying but today i'm going to make jesus my choice help them now to follow you as the light that gives life in the name of jesus we pray and we thank you amen all at home in the room put your hands together and celebrate the lord today and thank him for his word and for his goodness listen as the choir sings i want to give you an opportunity to make a decision for the lord jesus christ number one you're saying pastor wes i don't have a relationship with the lord i've heard those words trust and understand and follow they sound good to me but i don't know how that really works in my life but i want to tell you it sounds and means exactly what the word of god says rest your life on the confidence of who god is now that doesn't mean that the son is just going to break out and start shining that everything is just going to turn out all right but what it does mean is is that we have the one who will be with us through every celebration and challenge of life that's what it means lean not tonight on understanding that mean that you dismiss and park your mind away from being a christian but god will use all of who you are to know more of him and love more him love him more and to share him more with others and the lord then finally will direct your path and in doing so he will lead us and guide us and just because god doesn't tell you today everything that he wants you to know at one time doesn't mean that he won't guide you we didn't know a year ago we would be in the place where we are now did we no none of us knew that we had no idea that we would be faced with what we have faced over the last nine months and yet god has directed our path he has kept us and sustained us put your trust in him seeing that the daughter church is over go on the screen you can click on we'll call you today and respond to you even if you have a prayer request we'll pray with you today in that area of need the door to church is open and we welcome you right now [Music] it's waiting on you hallelujah [Music] come to jesus come to jesus [Music] [Music] welcome to the church without walls we're excited about having you be part of our family i look so forward to seeing you i think in just a couple of weeks virtually to welcome you and uh i can hardly wait i really mean that to meet you and see you and those of you around the globe i pray that the time allows that you will click on so we can meet our new family members uh on the different continents so we praise god for that let's prepare to give our tithe and offering to the lord as god has blessed us to be able to do so let's hold our gifts up before him even at home i always remind you that this is a great time to give taught in front of your children so they can say mom dad what a what are you doing and you said this is our expression of love to god let's say it together whether there's a temple that has a need where there's a need as a provision whether there's a provision there's god and whether that's god he'll supply in miraculous ways it's offering time praise the lord thank you for your gifts uh today you probably received a letter from me about our journey just thanking you and celebrating you it's been a year since we began that uh journey and then uh if you don't have the letter it'll be coming so that uh we can inform you i don't think that it would be appropriate for us to discuss that kind of business over the airway and so i'll send that uh to you by mail i think this week you should get it if you have not already received it so while you're giving and doing that haley i know you have something that you want to tell us

Channel: KCMUSA Sermon

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Id: 3yqWErZdSs4

Length: 43min 45sec (2625 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020